


Smoke and Mirrors

by FloaromaMeadow



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: AU, M/M, fits scarily well into canon tho, in theory, prideshipping--mostly just implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-08 19:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10394340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloaromaMeadow/pseuds/FloaromaMeadow
Summary: The pharaoh wasn't the only one who always knew his days were numbered.Or, what if Kaiba was already dying? What if the end of DSoD was just him taking control of the time and place?





	

He lost.

He lost to some _kid_. A nobody who’d never even set foot in a dueling arena.

And ever since, something has felt…off.

The mild existential crisis, he can handle. The uncertainty, the self-loathing, the sneaking sense that somewhere along the way he lost sight of his purpose and now everything he’s worked for has become twisted and wrong…they aren’t fun emotions, but he’s dealt with worse.

The migraines, on the other hand, are a bitch.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Seto?” Mokuba asks.

Kaiba inwardly rolls his eyes at his brother’s concern, but then again, he can’t exactly deny that he’s given him reason for it. He’s spent breakfast—the last few breakfasts, actually—wincing at the quiet scrape of cutlery and shielding his eyes from what little watery early-morning sunlight manages to make its way through the dining room curtains.

“I’m fine,” he says shortly, massaging his temples. He must be slipping. Normally he’s much better than this at hiding his moments of weakness.

“It’s just—” Mokuba wrings his napkin in his hands. “It’s just, uh, didn’t that Yugi guy say something about, um, crushing your mind?” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mokuba,” Kaiba snaps. “Yugi Muto wouldn’t need some kind of hocus-pocus curse to give me a headache; he’s obnoxious enough on his own.” He leaps to his feet, his chair shooting back against the hardwood floor with a screech that cuts through his skull, his plate left rattling in his wake. “Besides, I already told you, I’m fi—”  

Bright starbursts flash in front of his eyes. The world tilts nauseatingly. He half-sits, half-falls back into his chair with as much grace as he can muster.

Mokuba says nothing, but his fingers dig into the napkin with almost enough force to tear through the cloth.

Kaiba groans. “Fine, fine, whatever, I’ll have it checked.”

* * *

The headaches and dizzy spells are harmless, his private doctor assures him. Nothing to worry about. In some cases symptoms like his have been warning signs of more serious problems, even precursors to a comatose state, but in this case they should go away on their own in a few days. Probably a product of stress (of course it's just stress—it's not like Yugi Muto has _magic powers_ or anything).  
  
He goes back to business as usual.

Until the doctor calls him in again the next day.

“Were you wrong about the headaches being harmless?” he asks, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised. “If I’m about to drop into a coma, I’ll need to reschedule some meetings.”

“No, sir. This isn’t about the symptoms you were describing. There’s…something else. Something you should know.”  
  
The doctor shuffles her papers. She seems to steel herself for a moment before meeting his eyes. 

“As you’ll recall, I ran some scans yesterday while I was searching for a diagnosis.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do recall. I was there. Get to the _point_.”

She presses her lips together and adjusts her reading glasses. She’s looking at him oddly, a look he somehow feels he hasn’t seen in a long time, since he was much smaller. He bristles. Does she think he’s a child?

“The results just came back from the lab,” the doctor says, still giving him that look. “We found something.”

* * *

Three years. Maybe. Less before he starts to noticeably decline.

He walks back to his office in a haze.

“Man, he took that whole losing-the-card-game thing _hard_ ,” he hears one of his employees mutter as he passes by. “Poor guy should get a new hobby.”

He can’t even muster up enough energy to turn around and fire them.

He shuts himself away from the noise and bustle of his company headquarters and sits alone at his desk, shuffling through his deck with unseeing eyes and trembling fingers. He prays that Mokuba won’t come looking for him.

As usual, the universe gives him the exact opposite of what he asked for.

At first he almost doesn’t register the pounding at his doors. Then his brother barges into the room, impossible to ignore, and he’s saying something, something about a boat and a tournament. It’s a struggle to focus on the words. He can’t meet his eyes.

Distantly, he hears himself say, “There’s no point.”

“What do you mean no point?”

Everything feels slow and muffled and far away, but he can still make out the fear on Mokuba’s face, the tension in his voice. Shit. He’s scaring his baby brother.

He’s barely paying attention to what comes out of his own mouth, but he manages to fumble out something about Yugi Muto and “The Heart of the Cards” and finding himself.

He shoves the keys to a multi-billion dollar corporation into the hands of an eleven-year-old, and he runs away.

* * *

This is all Yugi’s fault, he tells himself.

It doesn’t really make sense. He doesn’t really care.

He spends the next few days hunched over the prototype of his new portable dueling arena system. The wires and electronic parts all fit neatly into place. The lines of code form perfectly-ordered rows.

If he’d never lost that duel…if he’d never been hit by that wave of crippling self-doubt, if he’d never gotten those stupid headaches, if he’d never gone to that stupid checkup and had those stupid tests done, if he just hadn’t _lost_ —

The thought " _Gozaburo was right_ " rises up like bile in his throat.

He has to win. He needs to _win_. If he can just beat Yugi into the dirt, he won’t be a loser anymore, and then maybe—

And then maybe…

There’s a knock at the door, and reality comes crashing back in.

* * *

He was wrong. Oh god, he was wrong.

He’d started to think that nothing mattered anymore, except revenge. And maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong, maybe he doesn’t matter, but _Mokuba_ , Mokuba matters.

And he’s failed him. He’s failed him so many times and in so many ways and if it’s too late to fix it now then he really is rotten to the core, then everything he’s ever worked for has been for nothing.

A lethal drop yawns at his feet and a fire burns in Yugi’s eyes, and for a frozen instant he has no idea if he’s going to call off his attack.

For a frozen instant he doesn’t care.

* * *

If there’s one thing he learns from the Industrial Illusions fiasco, it’s that he needs to make the most efficient use possible of the time he has left.

At first he thinks he should pour his energy into finding a cure on his own—he’s Seto Fucking Kaiba, isn’t he supposed to be able to do that sort of thing?

Except his specialties are programming and engineering, not medicine, and it could take years of study to reach a level where he could even start looking for a cure, and there’s no guarantee his work would even pay off, and—no, he has to prioritize, has to delegate. He sets a team of specialists to the task, funds them anonymously, plays it off as charitable donations. He doesn’t have much faith they’ll find anything, but it’s worth a shot.

In the meantime, he sets his laser-like focus on two goals:

  1. Make sure Mokuba will be provided for when he’s gone.


  1. Beat Yugi Muto’s punk ass.



* * *

No one questions it when he brings a doctor and a fully-stocked medical bay along on a week-long trading card tournament. They’re just grateful to have them around when everyone suddenly starts dropping like flies into mysterious card-game-induced comas (seriously, did they _all_ have pre-existing heart conditions? Why didn’t they say anything when they signed the waiver?).

He briefly toys with the idea of finding some way to preserve himself with technology if he can’t do it with medicine alone. After meeting his long-lost stepbrother, he decides against it.

* * *

Once, a boy with a mop of messy brown hair and an unfortunate propensity for button-up shirts and sweater vests had huddled in the corner of the orphanage play yard, absorbing every scrap of supplementary Duel Monsters materials he could get his nerdy little hands on. Those fraying guidebooks had told a story of mighty wizards commanding armies of monsters, using their magic to increase their beasts' strength and set cunning traps for their enemies.   
  
That little boy would have been thrilled with the idea that he was actually an Ancient Egyptian sorcerer.   
  
But Seto Kaiba had that kind of nonsense beaten out of him years ago.   
  
Besides, he knows who he is. He's the president of Kaiba Corporation. He doesn't rely on anyone, and he doesn't let anyone use him. He's never weak. And he never, ever loses.    
  
But Yugi _took that away from him_.  
  
And now he wants to talk to him about destiny? _Destiny?_ So, what, he's nothing but a pale imitation of a man who died thousands of years ago, he's doomed to repeat all of his choices and all his mistakes, and there's nothing he can do to stop it? _Screw that_.  
  
He'll show them. He'll control his own destiny. 

* * *

He can’t afford to care. Not in general, not on principle, and certainly not now.

(He can’t afford to let anyone else start caring about him. It’ll just hurt more down the line.)

* * *

Enough with the speeches already. Friendship, magic, basic emotional stability…can’t they see he doesn’t have time for this? He’s running out of _time._

* * *

He can’t afford to care, but it happens anyway.

It ends badly. But not for the reasons he always thought it would.

* * *

Months pass without any Supernatural Bullshit. No one tries to drag him along on any adventures, convince him that fairy tales are real, browbeat him into following his destiny. It's...quiet. And he should be grateful for that. He has plenty of uninterrupted time to secure Kaiba Corp's finances. Work feverishly on his pet projects. Hug his brother a little tighter.   
  
His team of specialists has turned up some promising leads, but nothing that's expected to pay off within the next decade. His hands are starting to shake. He doesn't think Mokuba has noticed yet, but it's only a matter of time.   
  
And there's still one item he hasn't crossed off his bucket list.   
   
He starts looking into interdimensional travel. 

* * *

They pity him. Mokuba. Roland. Even Yugi. They don’t understand that there’s nothing for him to move on to. They don’t understand that this is his last chance.

He goes days at a time without sleeping. He hemorrhages money. He becomes a self-taught expert on Egyptian archaeology (Ishizu Ishtar won’t answer his calls). He spends hours meticulously coding every individual strand of hair on Yugi’s (no, not Yugi’s— _the pharaoh_ in a borrowed body’s) head, every detail of his eyes, his smile, the definition of his muscles (shut up, it’s an important part of the realism).

(He weighs his recreation against the real deal—Could he be satisfied? Could it be enough?—and tells himself he’s not still tempted by the idea of retreating into the Virtual World.)

(Anyway, the answer is no.)

He stops going to school entirely. He skips meetings and cancels appointments and leaves confused investors waiting in his empty office. He kidnaps and blusters and fights and snarks and barrels his way toward his goal, and he doesn’t let a single person stand in his way.

Except one. The same person who always messed with his plans. Even now.

The puzzle hovers in the center of the arena he designed around it, close enough to touch and horribly, mockingly empty. Yugi (who was never his worthy opponent after all, never the one who defeated him, never the one who saved him, nothing but an imposter and a shell) looks at him with far too much understanding in his eyes. “I had to let him go,” he says gently (stop it), compassionately ( _stop it_ ). “And you have to as well.”

He can’t accept it. He can never accept it. But he faces his own death unflinchingly.

He’s not sure if he should be grateful or disappointed when he wakes up.

* * *

Weeks ago, when he’d taken off his locket, his last link to his past and the master key to Kaiba Corp, and pressed it into Mokuba’s hands, his brother had looked terrified. “Where are you going?”

He’d pasted on his most reassuring smile. “Nowhere.” _Not yet, anyway._ “Just think of it as a trial run. You could use the practice if you’re going to run our company someday.”

“Yeah,” Mokuba had said faintly, clinging to the chain of the locket like a lifeline. “Someday.”

Ever since, his little brother has played along like everything's normal. As Kaiba fiddles with the controls of the dimension transporter, Mokuba chatters away in his ear about inconsequential things: his annoying history teacher. The cool book he’s been reading. The company stock prices. Kaiba lets it wash over him as soothing background noise until everything is ready. Then the cheerful façade drops.

"Seto,” Mokuba pleads. “Promise you’ll come back."  
  
He doesn't answer.   
  
Maybe it's not fair to give Mokuba false hope, to let him think his brother's off gallivanting in some mystical Narnia and he'll come back as soon as he gets bored. But Seto can remember watching his mother waste away. It’s the image of her that always stuck with him, after, no matter how hard he tried to remember her any other way (or not at all). And…and anyway, Mokuba is so grown-up these days. So strong and resourceful. So much better-adjusted than he'll ever be (or could have been—there’s not exactly a “will be” anymore, is there). More than capable of standing on his own. _He doesn’t need me anymore. Not really._

He shuts off the video link before he loses his composure and tries not to think about the fact that the last words he’ll ever say to his brother are “You’re in charge.”  
  
If this works, great. He'll see him again. The pharaoh. If it doesn't...  
  
Well.   
  
Either way he'll know that in the end, he chose his own destiny.   
  
He tilts his head back.   
  
He smiles.   
  
He falls. 

* * *

He falls, but he doesn’t remember landing.

One second he’s plummeting to the Earth, and the next he’s lying on a soft, shifting surface, with bright sunlight shining down on his face and radiating up from the ground, hotter even than the Domino summer he left behind.

He's not sure what he expected from the afterlife, but it figures that the universe would want to have one last joke at his expense.  
  
Ancient Egypt. Sure. Why not.   
  
He watches the physical manifestation of his life force trickle out of his body with a detached sort of interest. 

Maybe none of this is real. Maybe he’s hallucinating (again). Maybe he’s lying in a back alley somewhere, drugged out of his mind. Maybe his dimension transporter crashed in a fiery explosion and this is his dying dream. Maybe—

No. Forget it. He’s too tired for this. He worked too hard to get here to question it now.

Besides, he didn’t spend billions of dollars and launch himself through the fabric of reality in an untested prototype just so he could sit around in the sand and contemplate his existence.

There’s a city off in the distance, its mirror image hovering in the air above it. As he levers himself to his feet, he wonders idly if it’s a mirage or if magic upside-down sky cities are just a thing that happens in the afterlife.

He starts walking.

He makes his way through a marketplace bustling with people (spirits?) who stare curiously at his anachronistic tech and his out-of-place clothing. Or maybe they’re looking at the dark, fluttering particles of his escaping life energy, which seem to flow faster the longer he stays here.

_Don’t dwell on it. Breathe. Keep moving._  
  
It doesn't actually take that long to track his rival down. He heads straight for the most over-dramatic-looking building he can see.   
  
And there he is.  
  
Kaiba's pretty sure he had a speech prepared, but now that he's actually face-to-face with Atem he has no idea what he’s supposed to say. _'It's, uh, been a while'? 'Duel me Pharaoh'?  'Have you really been spending your entire afterlife sitting on that throne looking pretty'?_  
  
_'I missed you'?_

He raises his arm and activates his duel disk, hoping that will spare him from having to actually open his mouth.

Atem waves a hand, and his attendants file out of the temple. He rises to his feet and—wait, what’s he doing. Why’s he walking down from the pedestal, can’t he duel just fine from up there, come to think of he’s not wearing a duel disk, _crap should I have brought two, crap crap crap_ —

“Kaiba.” The pharaoh stands before him, with a look in his eyes that Kaiba can’t quite place. “I…wasn’t expecting you here so soon.”

Kaiba smirks. “Did you really think you could weasel out of your rematch with me that easily?”

“Are you—” Atem blinks, shakes his head. “Is this still about _Duel Monsters_?”

“Of course it is,” Kaiba says a little too quickly, a little too sharply. “It’s always been about Duel Monsters.”

It’s funny. In all Kaiba’s memories of the pharaoh, in all the memories he programmed into his holographic recreation, he’s eternally confident. But now any semblance of that confidence is gone. Atem looks like he’s not sure whether he wants to laugh, cry, or grab Kaiba by the shoulders and shake him.

“Kaiba, you’re dying.”

He barks out a laugh. “What else is new.”

Atem stares at him. 

“Wha—”

Kaiba can actually watch Atem piece it together, working his way to the truth like a cartoon character flicking its pupils furiously back and forth until a lightbulb pops up over its head. “What do you mean— _oh_.”

They stare at each other in silence for a beat, Kaiba’s eyebrows quirked, Atem’s mouth hanging open in dawning horror.

Then Kaiba starts laughing.

It’s hilarious. The _look_ on his face, this whole situation, all of this, it’s just so _funny_ and the laughter just keeps coming and it’s bubbling up, choking him, breaking free from his chest in almost painful bursts and he can’t, he can’t stop, can’t stop to breathe, he’s laughing so hard tears are streaming down his face and he can’t stop and he can’t breathe and he—

There’s pressure around his waist. He looks down.

Atem is hugging him.

Kaiba freezes. He forces himself to take in a slow, shuddering breath. He should object. Make a scene. Shove him away.

He doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Atem says, the words muffled against Kaiba’s chest.

Kaiba blinks. Is the pharaoh…shaking? “What do you have to be sorry for?”

“I was _blind_.” He’s definitely shaking, his voice rough with emotion. “All that time…I should have seen…I should have known…” His hands clench into fists around the fabric of Kaiba’s coat. “I didn’t save you. I didn’t even try.”

Kaiba laughs, a small one this time. He hopes it sounds less wet to the pharaoh than it does to him. “I know saving the world’s your hobby and all, but hate to break it to you: you can’t save everyone. Guess that means you’re human. Just like everyone else.”

Atem doesn’t respond. He just clings to him tighter, as though he can stop the inevitable by force of will alone.

For a few moments, Kaiba stands there silently and lets him. Then he clears his throat. “So.”

Atem loosens his grip and leans back slightly, just far enough to look up at Kaiba’s face, but he keeps his arms wrapped around him.

Kaiba is only resigned to this. Definitely not grateful.

He stares over Atem’s head, his expression carefully neutral. “How much longer do you think I have.”

Atem follows the particles of life energy with his eyes as they dance, rise, and disappear like smoke from a fire. “Not long. Minutes, maybe.”

Kaiba breathes in and out, in and out, until he’s sure he can keep his voice steady. “Do you know what will happen.”

“I can’t say what will become of your body,” Atem says, sounding uncertain and guilty for his uncertainty. “Your soul, however, should remain here.”

Oh. That’s…that’s more than he’d hoped for. He’d assumed he’d only have just enough time with Atem for that final duel. “I can live with that.” His mouth twists into a wobbly smirk. “Well. Not _live._ ”

“Not funny.”

“Only because you’ve got no sense of humor.”

“Not about this.”

“Hm,” Kaiba says, looking down at the boy who existed for thousands of years and was alive for sixteen of them, conscious for less than twenty, who walked through a portal of light without hesitation.

Slowly, carefully, as though reaching for an illusion and bracing himself for the moment his hands will pass through it, he lifts his arms from where they’ve been dangling awkwardly at his sides and hugs Atem back.

“You know, you’re still gonna owe me that duel.”

The smile that flits across Atem’s face makes him look younger than his centuries. The sadness in his eyes makes him look much older than a teenager. “Don’t worry," he says. "We’ll have all the time in the world.”


End file.
